Fuck him. Fuck this whole fucking situation. This man set his path to collide with mine. To manipulate and control my life to become his. To break me down and play games until I don’t know which way is up anymore. I’m disgusted by tonight…but…I felt safe.
“I feel safe with you,” I say before thinking, immediately regretting letting him know that. The confession makes me nauseous because it’s as sick as he is, because it’s true. I’m safe with the monster, with the man who shattered another human being without blinking.
Ethan lifts his hand, but doesn’t touch me, just hovers his fingers over my lips.
“Feeling safe is not weak,” he says.
“You’re not normal.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You don’t love the way other people do.”
“No.”
“You don’t even see people the same way.”
“No.”
My voice drops to nothing.
“Then why do I feel like you see me more clearly than anyone ever has?”
He finally touches my mouth with a possessiveness that has my knees buckling.
“Because I was the first to see you, others made you invisible.”
“I was quiet.”
“Now you are loud inside yourself, you have found your inner spirit. The mask of the world that you thoughtmade it a good place has shattered. All you see is the cold reality and the beauty inside of it.”
That’s it, that’s the truth I didn’t want, that he has woken something. Something reckless. Something starving. Something that doesn’t want safety…it wants intensity with meaning and an edge.
I pull away, unable to accept these thoughts. I can’t process all of this information.
“I hate this, I hate how you control me.”
“No you don’t. You need it, you crave it, Leo.”
“I hate that I want to stay,” I say, my stomach twists at my own words.
“I’m not an object, Ethan.”
“No, you’re my fixation,” he says.
That should terrify me, as this is what you hear on those psycho murder docu-series. I’m one of those people that the viewers scream at to see the red flags and run for your life. I’m that person. And like any brainwashed fool, all I feel beneath the terror is a warmth. A horrible, treacherous warmth.
I walk over and sink onto his couch and let my hands cover my face.
“I don’t know how to go back to my life now.”
“You don’t. This is your life now, here with me.”
“None of this is fair.”
“Real life isn’t fair. Neither was being unloved.”
That hurts more than anything else he’s said, because it’s the one truth I’ve not said out loud.
